•AD-like dementia is associated with a less differentiated personality structure, particularly affecting Emotionality.

•Personality de-differentiation appears specific to AD-like dementia rather than normal aging.

•Personality changes  in AD but not in healthy aging are closely linked to cognitive decline across multiple domains.

 

INTRODUCTION

AD is associated not only with cognitive decline but also with behavioral/personality changes (Robins et al., 2011).

Personality structure changes in aging (Gobbo et al., 2025) and could be further altered in neurodegeneration.

No studies have directly examined links between personality change and cognitive change.

Aim: To test whether AD-like dementia is associated with (i) structural reorganization (de-differentiation) of HEXACO personality traits and
(ii) co-occurring associations between perceived personality change and cognitive decline.

 

METHODS

Participants: informants of patients with AD-like dementia (n=207) and  of cognitively healthy older adults (OA) (n=201)

Materials: Informants completed

Analyses: Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on current HEXACO data; network analysis on personality-cognition change; group comparisons via Network Comparison Test.

 

RESULTS

 

CONCLUSIONS 

- AD-like dementia is associated with a simplified personality structure, with Emotionality no longer emerging as an independent factor, likely reflecting core AD symptoms such as apathy and depression.

This pattern parallels previously reported cognitive de-differentiation in neurodegeneration (Tosi et al., 2024)

- Personality and cognitive changes co-occur in a distributed, interrelated pattern compared to healthy older adults.

à Relevance of including personality assessment in clinical and care settings for neurodegenerative disease.

 

REFERENCES

Gobbo S, Trapattoni E, Romano D. Structural and dimensional analysis of personality in healthy older adults. Sci Rep. 2025;15:23804.

Robins Wahlin TB, Byrne GJ. Personality changes in Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2011;26(10):1019–1029.

Tosi G, Nigro S, Urso D, Spinosa V, Gnoni V, Filardi M, et al. The network structure of cognitive impairment: from subjective cognitive decline to Alzheimer’s disease. J Neurosci. 2024;44(27).

 

CONTACT silvia.gobbo@unimib.it